Brown’s Path From Tea Party to Centrist Aids Campaign

By Laura Litvan -
May 14, 2012

Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown was
the Tea Party’s darling after he won Ted Kennedy’s seat in a
2010 upset. Seeking re-election in the Democratic-leaning state,
Brown now is running as a centrist who splits with his party.

Back home at Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown
this month, he touted new laws he sponsored to help small
companies get start-up funds and to strengthen the insider-trading ban for lawmakers. Brown boasted to a Boston business
group that only one Republican senator votes against the party
more often than he does.

“I’m the second-most bipartisan senator in the United
States Senate, maybe the first by a half a point depending on
the week,” he told members of the New England Council, alluding
to Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine.

In a contest that will help decide control of the Senate
that Democrats now govern 53-47, Brown is trying to show he has
set his own path two years after beating Democrat Martha Coakley
to finish the late Kennedy’s term. Now he’s running against
Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard University professor and
architect of President Barack Obama’s Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau.

While a voting record can be an incumbent’s albatross,
political analysts say Brown has the benefit of a short one.

‘Choosing His Battles’

“What he’s doing is picking and choosing his battles,”
said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire
Survey Center, which has polled in the race. “He’s stayed
largely out of the limelight and when he’s noticeable, he’s
usually not on the controversial side of an issue.”

Brown, 52, has split with his party on votes including a
repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving
openly in the military, and to advance Richard Cordray’s
nomination to lead the consumer bureau. He also has worked to
boost ethics rules and oversight of government agencies.

Warren campaign adviser Doug Rubin said Brown cast plenty
of votes that most Massachusetts residents will find
objectionable, including to preserve oil company tax subsidies
and to let employers deny insurance coverage for birth control
if it violates their religious beliefs. He opposed some elements
of Obama’s $447 billion jobs proposal in 2011.

Brown will have another test soon on a Democratic bill to
make it easier to win pay-discrimination lawsuits. Brown opposed
it in 2010 and might alienate some female voters if he votes
with Republicans again.

‘Bobbing His Way’

John Walsh, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party,
said while Brown is trying to be an independent “bobbing his
way through” tough votes, he doesn’t support jobs and other
domestic programs enough to be someone who state voters “can
count on to vote in their interests.”

Walsh said Brown will be hampered by his place on the
ballot with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the
presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who lags behind
Obama in polls in the state.

“Scott Brown is part of the national Republican agenda and
that’s going to be a very hard thing for him here in
Massachusetts,” Walsh said.

Campaigning last month, Warren, 62, highlighted Brown’s
opposition to the health-care overhaul. Brown supported a 2010
financial services law only after securing a provision exempting
Massachusetts companies from part of it, she said.

‘There for Families’

“Are you there for families, or are you there for the
richest and most powerful banks in the entire world?” she said
April 29 at the opening of a campaign office in Acton. “Scott
Brown’s on one side, I’m on the other.”

While the senator fulfilled his campaign promise to vote
against the health-care law, he made an early show of
independence. In his third Senate vote, he sided with Democrats
on a $15 billion jobs bill endorsed by Obama. He was branded a
turncoat by conservative bloggers, though he drew praise from
the Boston Globe and Boston Herald editorial boards.

Brown has set himself apart in other debates. During the
2011 budget fight that almost led to a federal government
shutdown, he called for compromise on funding for Planned
Parenthood after House Republicans pushed to eliminate it.

Brown focuses on issues on which both parties tend to
agree. On the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, Brown works with centrist Chairman Joe Lieberman, a
Connecticut independent, and Collins, its top Republican. The
three lawmakers introduced a bill to overhaul the cash-strapped
U.S. Postal Service, which passed the Senate last month.

Favorable Polling Results

Polls show that voters are responding to the senator’s
message. In a March 21-27 Boston Globe poll of 544 likely
Massachusetts voters, 49 percent said Brown would be better able
to work with the opposite party, while 27 percent said that
about Warren. Sixty-three percent of independent voters viewed
him favorably, to her 33 percent.

Some critics say Brown’s agenda is too politically bland to
motivate voters, and that he’ll need more than good-governance
bills to survive in a state Obama carried by 62 percent in 2008.

“They’re low-hanging fruit that may not drive the kinds of
votes that Senator Brown will need for what is already a neck-and-neck race for re-election,” said Stephen Crawford,
spokesman for Rethink PAC, a super-PAC set up by labor unions to
help defeat Brown.

Brown is moderating his record. In the 2009-2010 session he
voted with his party 81 percent of the time, according to data
compiled by the Washington Post. This session, Brown has voted
with Republicans 70 percent of the time.

Insider Trading Bill

Brown stood next to Obama twice in April as the president
signed bills he co-sponsored. One stiffens the ban on insider
trading by lawmakers and federal employees, and the other lets
small businesses seek early capital investors on the Internet.

“Standing next to President Obama for the second bill
signing in as many days is proof of what is possible when we
work together,” Brown said in a statement.

Where he has taken risks by voting with his party,
sometimes there is the potential for benefits. Brown’s vote
March 1 to let employers refuse to provide insurance coverage
for contraceptives risks alienating women, while it may have
some appeal to Catholic voters in Massachusetts.

Before that vote, he added his name to a bill to
reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. On March 23, Brown
and his sister toured a shelter for domestic-violence victims in
Framingham to discuss the bill and the abuse he says he suffered
as a child from his stepfather.

Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist, said Warren will have
trouble turning Brown’s record into a campaign issue.

‘Bipartisan Brand’

“He’s making himself into a bipartisan brand through
legislative policy,” said Bonjean, once an aide to former
Republican Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi.

Some in the Tea Party have forgiven Brown’s centrist
actions. FreedomWorks, the Tea Party group running attack ads
against incumbent Republicans it says aren’t conservative
enough, will probably help Brown get out the vote, said Russ Walker, the group’s national political director.

“A lot of people in the Tea Party movement have been
disappointed with him, but his positions were pretty well
known,” Walker said. “The one issue Tea Partiers cared about
was Obama-care. He said he’d vote against it, and he did.”